


Through the Scope

by Duvessa



Series: Through the Scope [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Iron Man (Movies), Iron Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Identity Issues, Memory Loss, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, everything happened, everything that didn't include Steve Rogers waking up from the ice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-29
Updated: 2017-06-29
Packaged: 2018-11-20 11:53:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11335146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duvessa/pseuds/Duvessa
Summary: In a world where Captain America is still asleep in the ice and dead to the world, where Tony Stark never had the arc reactor removed from his chest after the ordeal with Aldrich Killian, and where Hydra is still embedded into the ranks of SHIELD, one Winter Soldier cuts his ties to his previous handlers after he stumbles across a man wearing another dead man's face. There is only one man out of time, and his name is James Buchanan Barnes.





	1. I saw a dead man

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Art Post: Through the Scope](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11344287) by [Lets_call_me_Lily](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lets_call_me_Lily/pseuds/Lets_call_me_Lily). 



> This thing has totally gotten out of control and wouldn’t be up if it weren’t for the inspiration and unyielding support of the amazing Lets_call_me_Lily, who promised to stick with me till the end of the line. I owe you.  
>   
> Beta-read with tireless effort by the artist and [trickstermoose](http://trickstermoose67.tumblr.com) (Renversermonmonde) alike. Any remaining mistakes are my own.

With stories like these it is always difficult to find the starting point. You can’t really say which incident led to the moment where all of it assumedly began, pinpoint which incident sparked the chain of events that led to this exact moment. The moment in which Tony Stark was staring right into the eyes of the man who would end his existence and free his conscience from guilt.

So if this was it, he thought, then what was the moment when his end had begun?

Tony knew he was fucked the moment the interface in his helmet flickered for the first time. The suit had taken too much damage already. He had lost his course as soon as something had hit his chest. Hard. JARVIS had trouble finding the source, as the streets were swamped with their enemies; a band of rogue kids with powers too strong for their own good.

The world had gone crazy. Super humans. Aliens. Demi-gods. Mutants. With every threat they defeated another seemed to claw its way out of the underworld. Sometimes Tony wondered where all those evil masterminds and powerful threats came from, and sometimes he wished for the good old days, where the most exotic thing the world had had to face was a Hulk.

They must have existed prior to all of this. The alien attack in New York couldn’t have been the birth of all this madness. Yes, mad scientists had existed all over the world already, had done their inhuman experiments throughout the ages, for as long as mankind existed. Hydra and its descendants had proven that again and again throughout the decades. And apparently there had been mutants living among them for … forever, for all he knew. So why the hell did they suddenly all decide to take a fucking stroll in the park and have their big coming out party one after the other? And why had no one ever spotted any of those threats? As annoying and (barely) manageable all of these attacks were, their opponents were either insanely powerful or unnervingly well organized. Tony couldn’t wrap his genius head around how SHIELD had managed not to spot this insanity for so long, when it had been sitting right under their noses all this friggin’ time?!

So, why now? Did they really feel so inspired by the miserable failures of their fellow members of evil society, although they had, so far, failed miserably in taking over the world? Because that’s what they did, again and again. They failed. Because the world didn’t take shit from people like these anymore. At least not since World War II. Not since Hydra. And not since a demi-god with sleek hair had decided to play world-explorer and had brought an alien freak show straight to New York City. Not since the _Avengers Initiative_ had been born. And sure as hell not on his watch.

Couldn’t they just give them a break? At least for a couple of weeks?

Even though Tony was technically still only a consultant on this whole Avenger’s initiative, he went through suits faster than he could repair them, let alone build them.

There were fresh bruises layered over his old ones and he really needed a vacation, especially since he barely managed more than a few hours of sleep before the night terrors would wake him. The circles under his eyes were as dark as the bruises on his abdomen. He was short tempered, couldn’t concentrate properly and was running solely on caffeine. He couldn’t take it anymore. Even his sarcasm was wearing thin. And that certainly said something.

Super-hero burn out, maybe it was a thing.

There was an explosion to his right – obviously aimed at him - which blew away the better part of a skyscraper. He adjusted his course in order to avoid the falling debris and not to be hit by a probable second attack, as he tasked JARVIS with finding the head of the snake - because if you took out the head, the rest of the troops usually fell into disorder and were more easily picked apart – and the source of the attack.

They were in an urban area and as much as he would have loved to collect catch all of his fellow citizens before they fell to their certain deaths, he could only do one thing at a time: fight the bad guys or save people. Since he was apparently a prime target, he would do well to stay away from the innocent bystanders, although in the middle of Manhattan, this was quite an impossible task. He plucked a woman out of the air. She was bruised and panicking. The hard grip of his metal suit would probably leave even more bruises on her skin. There was a man he couldn’t reach without dropping the lady.

More innocent deaths that were on his conscience.

He saw people landing in a huge elastic web, which Spiderman had spun between lanterns just below the building with the destroyed front, as he dropped the woman off. “Nice job, kid.” The praise sounded tense as he focused on what JARVIS showed him. The shot had come from below a bridge a few blocks away where Barton already flooded the area with his exploding arrows. The partially collapsed bridge wouldn’t make Fury all too happy, the director had already been raging about the cost of all the repairs the city threw SHIELD’s way, but it was efficient. And if it killed his assailant in the process, he couldn’t find it in his wrung out conscience to grieve.

On today’s menu were enhanced soldiers with genetically modified backup. Test tube mutants, he guessed, since they couldn’t be identified by JARVIS – which said something, as Tony took pride in the many databases his A.I. had access to. They were too young to be so ruthless.

It was messy, to say the least. It had started with a bank robbery in the south of Manhattan, which deteriorated into a hostage situation, and had been followed up by a terrorist warning near Rockefeller Center where before they knew it, the criminals had been waving around their hands instead of their guns, shooting fireballs and throwing cars at the police. That had been the point when they had called in SHIELD and since the shit show was happening right in Tony’s neighborhood, he had felt obliged to step in. As handy as the Green Guy would have been, the streets were too narrow for Banner’s alter ego to not destroy more than he’d safe.

This hadn’t been about money and it hadn’t been about blowing up a building and blaming a terrorist organization for it – it was too unorganized. There were several small and more major hits throughout the city, focusing on lower Manhattan, and they were putting up a fight. As if the mutants wanted them to focus their attention on them. As if the endgame was something else entirely and as if they didn’t care that they got roasted in the process. They were being used as cannon-fodder. And they knew it.

So far Tony could only guess and try his best to help and contain the threat to their city.

He was flying full speed through the panic filled streets, communicating over the coms he was heading into Barton’s direction to give the archer a hand in defusing one of the diversions, making a detour to assess the situation a couple of streets down, where a SHIELD Strike Team called for backup. They were facing down a spike-throwing menace. This felt even worse than the Chitauri.

There was a dull _thunk_ on his suit. The impact was audible, but light enough to not put him off course. It didn’t feel like the usual bullet-hit. It felt more like something tiny that stuck to him, but he couldn’t claw it from his suit as he needed both of the hand repulsors to maintain his flight route.

“Sir, we have been hit,” the heavy English accent filled his ears and the interface in his vision flickered again.

“Figured that. What’d we get?”

“I am not sure, sir. It is stuck to the left shoulder of the suit,” JARVIS supplied and highlighted the spot on the interface that showed Tony his vitals and the general status of his current suit. “It could be a tracking device.”

“Could? You’re gonna need an update, buddy.” As the words had left his lips and filled the hot air in his suit, the lights went out with an electric zip - as did his repulsors.

“Uh-oh.”

Whatever it had been, it had taken the arc reactor – the sole energy source of his suit and his beating heart – out of commission. There was only one way Tony was going from here: down.

He caught glimpses of the world through the eyeholes of the now dark helmet as he was spinning. The sky was too bright, he thought. Too white, as the midday sun painted it a dazzlingly and glaring blue and the sunbeams reflected harshly from the glass of a skyscraper before the shadows from the buildings around him blocked out the light and swallowed him whole.

The fall was short, the impact hard, but the concrete took the hit far worse than his suit.

His whole body felt like one big bruise.

Groaning, Tony tried to push himself up as soon as he had sucked air back into his lungs. He was lying face first on the street. Everything hurt and his consciousness was fraying on the edges. The lights were still out, meaning that the reactor in his chest was still in the not so much appreciated state of being offline.

There was blood running down his forehead and over his left eye from what he supposed to be a cut somewhere near his hairline, where he had hit his head on his helmet. And maybe his nose was broken, he couldn’t really tell.

“Oh boy. That’s gonna be bad,” he muttered.

Just as he had pushed himself onto his knees, a hard kick landed on his side, causing him to not only topple over sideways, but sending him flying a couple of feet where a parked car caught him. The tires screeched in protest as the parked car was pushed sideways over the concrete before Tony dropped onto the ground a second time.

Now his everything hurt even worse. The suit had basically taken the full force of the hit, but the blow had left a dent in his side. What the hell had hit him? A truck?

As he turned his head and tried to scramble to his feet at the same time, he felt the weight of the suit heavily now that his cybernetic interface wasn’t giving him a hand. Tony caught a glimpse of what he supposed had been the truck, or a tank, or a train for all he knew.

It was a man. A single man, dressed in black and walking his direction with a big long-range gun slung casually over his shoulder.

Bringing one hand up to knock onto his chest in a desperate attempt to bring his reactor back to life, Tony pushed himself further upright, bringing his knees under his body to scramble to his feet. Without the reactor, the suit had no juice. Without juice, he couldn’t communicate with the team. Without power in his reactor, he already felt his heart constricting in his chest. Without the reactor he was not wearing a weapon but dressed in heavy armor with no means to defend himself. At least it would take the hits until he was powered up again, because as smoothly as his suit moved, without his A.I. aiding him in combat the suit felt like a stiff shell which made it hard to coordinate his movements.

“This’s gonna be really bad,” Tony gasped.

Without JARVIS' helping hand and all-seeing eye, he had to rely on his own mundane vision, however he couldn’t spot anyone behind the prowling predator, maybe because his senses were going into overload as the oh so well-known panic kicked in. He didn’t take darkness all too well, not since he carried that nuke through the wormhole. And without his A.I., the suit was nothing but a tight, dark embrace, with a dent on his side pressing annoyingly into one of his bruises.

When the man had almost reached him, he tossed the long range weapon to the side carelessly. Tony had the presence of mind to claw at his left shoulder, where the unidentified thing had hit him, and just as his reactor stumbled to life and the suit was struggling to reboot, the man reached him. One man was no match for his suit, Tony knew, and the sleek smoothness and the icy stare in those eyes made his primal instincts kick in.

That man had no soul.

Tony didn’t need to see the rest of the covered face to know he had found something not even the devil would want.

The fight was short. Tony tried to land a hit on the covered face with his metal fist in an attempt to knock the guy’s lights out. Tony knew there wouldn’t be enough force behind his punch with his body shutting down on him, but it’d buy him some time until all his systems were up and running again and JARVIS would come back to life. Instead of connecting with the guy’s face, metal met metal.

And wow, how had he managed to miss that major detail?

A silver hand was wrapped around his right fist and was his arm pulled sideways easily. The metal fist – no, metal _arm_ he realized, as the limb was not covered, was crushing his suit and the repulsor on his palm in the process. As the software of the suit stuttered back to life, he brought up his left hand to blow the guy’s brains out with his repulsor. The man turned around his own axis in an instant, knowing all too well what Tony’s plan was, grabbing him under the chin with his other hand and throwing him over his shoulder.

The impact forced the air out his lungs once again and JARVIS began helpfully assessing the situation just as his teammates’ voices rang in his ears through the comms, bringing back the turmoil of the fight.

It just wasn’t his day.

There was a knee pressing down on his chest and a metal hand gripped his mask, obscuring his vision and pulling the golden face plate right off the rest of the helmet, sending sparks flying everywhere as the connecting cables were unceremoniously ripped apart. The fresh air that filled his lungs tasted like the sweetest nectar, even though he knew he was neck deep in trouble. For a moment he just stared, paralyzed by the shocking display of strength and the realization that this man, this mere man, might be the one to finish him off for good. He suddenly found himself too tired, too worn out, to resist. He wanted all of this constant fighting to be over. Once and for all.

The figure looming over him did just the same; frozen in place, he stared down into Tony’s face as if he was seeing a ghost. There was a glimmer in those bright blue eyes, a flicker of … something. Recognition, maybe? But then the moment was over. Tony’s survival instinct kicked in and he pulled up his left arm and fired a shot aiming straight at the man’s chest. The sheer force of the repulsor sent his attacker flying and crashing into a building on the other side of the street.

_Try to walk that one off,_ he thought savagely.

Then artillery fire burst from down the street where the stranger had appeared from, forcing Tony to scramble to his feet to get away. The wind was harsh without the helmet covering his face as he flew to safety.

Ten days later, he still knew nothing about the identity of the mysterious metal-armed man. The mutant situation had been contained while he had been busy with his own personal hitman and apart from a dent in the concrete, a wrecked car and a hole in the wall on the other side of the street, there had been no trace of Tony’s assailants.

Plural - because he wouldn’t take shit from Barton about being plucked out of the air by one man. Besides, there had been people firing at him, so he was only bending the truth a little during the debriefing. Still, the whole thing was … off.

The mutants he got. Child soldiers that came from a laboratory and enhanced soldiers trying to steal the research of a super-secret laboratory (which wasn’t so secret to begin with, if the bad guys had been able to locate it), sure. An organization which wanted to throw the world into chaos and attain global rule, commonplace. This man, though… something wasn’t right. The whole thing left a foul taste in his mouth.

Firstly, he had been hit, midflight, at full speed with some sort of EMP that had blown his reactors lights out. Unfortunately he hadn’t been able to retrieve the thing to find out what had almost sealed his fate. Anyway, as far as he knew only Barton was that good, or maybe not even the Amazing Hawkeye was _that_ good, which would help prove his theory that his latest nemesis had been enhanced as well, even if one was to ignore his metal arm. Tony wasn’t too keen to test his theory, because it would do little for his ego if Barton was in fact that good.

Secondly, the guy had crashed the iron fist of his suit _and_ ripped off his face with said metal arm. He had thrown him around as if he was nothing. Tony knew how heavy his suit was, even though he had put a lot of effort into making it lighter for flight purposes. So he really wanted to know if the metal was just armor plating, some sort of attached weapon, or if it was indeed a real arm.

Thirdly, the two incidents weren’t connected. The soldiers and the child-mutants weren’t related at all. How Tony knew? He had tried to piece it together, to get a bigger picture, but no matter how he looked at it, all of the evidence was pointing to two separate attacks, one of which had definitely been a hit on him. On Iron Man. On Tony Stark. The guy with the metal arm and his team were not connected to the other crazies who’d killed a handful of scientists and destroyed the better part of the New York City skyline they had recently rebuilt after the alien attack. The two attacks had just been inconveniently organized on the same day.

Why him, and not any of the other Avengers? Sure, Romanoff had been accompanied by a whole Strike Unit, but Barton and Parker had been by themselves. Even though an EMP would do very little to take any of them out, both of them would have been easier targets to the marksman. Neither of the guys had any body armor and Barton was also lacking Parker’s heightened senses.

So why was he the target? More importantly, who was gunning for him?

But try as he might, he couldn’t get his hands on anything. There was nothing to be found about a man with a metal arm anywhere. No database, newspaper clipping or blogpost mentioned any report of a mercenary or assassin that might fit his description.

The only thing Tony had been able to learn was from the hacked traffic camera footage: the guy had a star on his metal arm, something Tony had kind of overlooked while he had been busy trying not to die.

It hadn’t looked like a partial suit or body armor, both in real life and on tape. The more often he rewatched the grainy footage, it looked more and more like an actual arm, with the movements too smooth to be anything else. Then again, Tony believed himself to be the only man to be able to build amazing shit. As such his theory always went back to it being some sort of armored limb.

Tony still knew neither the assassin's name nor his origin, but he really wanted to get his hands on that arm.

His best guess was that he had been wanted dead, because that was the most common motivation the bad guys had when approaching him directly. His death or his tech. Mostly both. Tony had to hand it to them, no one had managed so far what this man had done within minutes - they had done an amazing job with picking him out of the sky. Terrifyingly enough the stranger had brought Tony to his knees, quite literally. The variety of horrors for his nightmares to choose from had been enriched by one set of dead blue eyes. Not that Tony had really needed another theme for his already colorful night terrors.

But they hadn’t tried to kidnap him, they had simply disappeared. The whole thing was off.

It was almost three weeks later when he met his almost-killer again.

He’d had a rough night, meaning he hadn’t slept. At all. He was jittery and ready to fly off the handle; dealing with legal shit wasn’t really doing his mood any favors.

Happy had driven him to the appointment. Tony would have rather taken one of his suits, since they were the only things these days that could give him a sense of security, but Pepper had insisted that showing up by car made him look more approachable. So Happy drove him, because Pepper had _lent_ Happy to him.

“How is she?” Tony was looking out the window, though he didn’t see any of the buildings they were rushing past, his eyes unfocused. He didn’t see any of Washington’s monuments either.

“She’s good. Healthy.”

“Good.”

That was it. That was all the contact Pepper and he had these days. When they talked it was over the phone, and even then they only spoke when it couldn’t be avoided. If it could be done, communication happened via the legal department of Stark Industries.

The pain from their break up was fresh for them both. Tony might have overcome his alcohol addiction and his lust for girls for Pepper, but the PTSD after New York had ruined what could have been a long-lasting relationship. He hadn’t been able to sleep, had overworked himself constantly, had lost his temper way too often, and had snapped at Pepper repeatedly. He had even summoned a suit into their bedroom in his sleep during a nightmare. He had endangered Pepper actively, even though he had been unconscious at the time.

She had begged him to see a psychiatrist. Tony, being as stubborn as he was, had refused, until there had only been harsh words left between them, slowly ripping apart what they had.

The aftermath of Killian’s Mandarin scheme had been the last nail in the coffin of their relationship. Tony didn’t blame Pepper. She had been kidnapped and enhanced against her will, and though he had wanted to help her through it, help her cope, Tony hadn’t had his own shit together for what felt like years. He had been barely holding on. As much as he had wanted to be Pepper’s tower of strength, her rock, he couldn’t, unable to deal with his own problems.

They had both tried to help each other, but before they could be there for one another they had to clean up their own mess. When the time had come for them to face the sad truth that this couldn’t go on further, they had agreed to end it, like adults. Pepper was strong. She would come out on top of this, Tony knew.

Since Pepper was gone things had gotten worse, only now there was no one around to see it, as Tony actively severed the ties to his friends and comrades. But that wasn’t her fault.

They had put a hold to their relationship and kept it professional. When she needed him to show his face somewhere, Tony did. Whenever he saw Pepper, he always ended up asking himself what could possibly stand between the two of them when they cared for each other so deeply. Which was why they tried to not talk at all, because slipping back into old habits was so painfully easily and it wouldn’t change a thing. It would just be a never-ending cycle. It was tempting to deny the truth. They had. Multiple times. Which was why they tried to avoid each other, at least for now.

This, today, was legal stuff regarding his company. No Iron Man business, no SHIELD errands. Some maniac had somehow copied one of his inventions and had wrought havoc over Detroit. In the name of justice, of course.

Then the tech had been stolen before he had been able secure it and not even SHIELD had managed to find its whereabouts.

The legal system demanded an explanation and had set up a (supposedly) independent jury to assess if Tony Stark and/or Stark Industries was at fault. Even though he was not acting CEO, Tony was still the majority owner of Stark Industries and Stark Enterprises and he was still the mastermind behind most of the company’s products. Coming up with groundbreaking inventions and changing the world was his passion after all. Protecting the world, making it into a better place and trying to make up for his failings, were the only things that kept him going.

Today, the state tried once again to get their hands on his tech, tried once again to get their greedy fingers on his inventions and tried to bring Iron Man to his knees.

He hated the legal system. The only thing Tony hated more was going anywhere without his suit. Whenever he did, he felt a shadow hovering behind him. Always there, on the edge of his field of vision. Always present and yet not there when he turned around.

He was going crazy.

The hearing was hell. With the media present, the unnerving sound of shutters had constantly filled the room. Tony had felt antsy and about ready to bolt. The only thing that kept him sane were Happy in the back of the room and a redheaded Russian spy in the second row. If he shifted to the right far enough he could spot her perfect hair and her calm green eyes.

Natasha was here on behalf of SHIELD. Of course she was. SHIELD was not involved in this. At least, not officially, so they couldn’t exactly send an official SHIELD member to interfere. But a deadly spy, a ruthless assassin that could blend in perfectly, now that was something else entirely.

Even though she was present to report back to Fury, her presence was soothing to his thin-worn nerves and quieted down the paranoid voices in his head. If there was a threat, she would spot it before he did. She would probably take the threat down before Tony even knew something was off. She was just that good.

Towards the end of the hearing, they told him that he was required to stay in Washington for two more days. He felt about ready to flip them off and tell them in his old Tony-fashion to please go and fuck themselves. But he knew better, so he didn’t.

On his last day in the city, there was a knock on the door of his hotel suite in the early evening. Room service had already been delivered, so Tony approached the door warily while his mind wandered to the briefcase that contained his travel-suit. The metal one.

Natasha’s smile was easy and made Tony release the breath he wasn’t aware he had been holding.

She lifted a finger to her lips, implying to stay quiet, before she slid inside the room with movements as silent and smooth as ever. Tony was left at the door, wondering if this was supposed to be SHIELD sending their reprimands on how badly he had handled today’s hearing. He closed the door slowly before he turned to follow her into the grand living area of his suite only to see Natasha leaning over a side table, pulling a bug from behind the painting. Then she retrieved another from behind the television and another from the plant close to the sitting area.

Since she knew about them, Tony figured SHIELD had put them there, if not the Black Widow herself. The look in his eyes was full of mock-hurt and silent but honest accusation.

Her voice was calm, as if she hadn’t had a care in the world. “We have about fifteen minutes.” She was still wearing her business attire from today’s hearing. There was a file on the desk that hadn’t been there before.

“Sneaky little spider.” There was no kindness in his words.

She shrugged. “Orders. It’s nothing personal.”

“After all this time, you would think SHIELD trusts me,” he said as he made his way to the minibar. He needed a drink, desperately. “But apparently Fury doesn’t give a flying shit how often you risk your life for, you know, the world.”

“It’s not SHIELD, its Fury.”

“Aren't they the same thing?”

Natasha didn’t answer, she merely raised one of her perfect eyebrows. Tony made a disapproving noise and gulped down his first drink. Drinking wasn’t something he did to the same extent as he had a couple of years prior, but he still enjoyed high quality drinks from time to time, just to take the edge off. Like it did just now.

“When has he ever trusted anyone?” The redhead made it sound more like a statement rather than a question. “He doesn’t trust his own shadow.”

“What’s this?” Tony pointed to the blank file that was patiently waiting on the desk before he poured himself a second drink, ignoring her statement entirely. “Something I need my legal team for?”

The smile on her beautiful face didn’t reach her eyes. “I would like to consider us friends, Tony. So I thought I might give you a heads up before I bring out the big guns.” Natasha had stepped towards the table as she spoke and opened the file, turning it so Tony could read. “Anything you want to tell me?”

At least she remembered he didn’t like being handed things. Natasha was good with people, especially when it came to mastering their quirks. Adapting was her second nature.

Tony stepped closer to get a better look, the now refilled tumbler in his right hand. On top of the rather thin pile, a grainy image of a man with long dark hair which fell in thick strands as if greasy or wet. The quality of the shot, which appeared to be from some traffic camera, was rather poor and a baseball hat covered most of his features anyway. The clear cut chin was covered with a dark shadow Tony guessed to be a heavy stubble.

“Who is this?”

“A ghost.”

His eyes darted to her face. “Whose ghost?”

“Yours.” She tilted her head ever so slightly as she studied his features. “I spotted him in the crowd yesterday. He seemed familiar. When I saw him today, I realised why.”

Tony raised his eyebrows, not knowing what she was aiming at. The look in her emerald eyes told him to tread carefully, making him swallow down any sassy remark.

“I met him once,” Natasha disclosed.

Tony took a wild guess before taking a sip from his drink. “One of your Russian spy buddies?”

“Worse. Neither Russian, nor a spy.” Now that had Tony interested. “Care to explain why he is following you?”

Tony couldn’t help but to look at her slightly baffled. “Following me?” An assassin – no matter the origin – was not the usual member of his fan-club. Or at least not for long, he guessed, because assassins usually, well, assassinated you. Shadowing was more of a spy thing.

She pulled another picture from the file. It was a shot he knew too well: a picture of a traffic camera of the fateful day when Iron Man had lost his face in Lower Manhattan.

“So you know my latest buddy,“ Tony concluded as he looked up to meet her gaze. Natasha’s posture was relaxed, but the calm in her eyes betrayed her. His heart rate sped up and he felt the well-known panic trickling in through the cracks. If Romanoff was speaking to him in private, while looking at him like that, he knew he was in trouble.

“So you know who he is,” Natasha assumed.

“Met him once.” Tony gestured towards the last picture. “Not a fan. The arm is a nice touch, though. If I knew you’d be interested in him I’d have asked you to come by.”

The look in her emerald eyes would have anyone else quivering in fear. Tony swallowed hard. He was overstepping lines.

“Like I said, I’ve met him once. It didn’t really go well for me,” she eluded, her voice smooth. Too smooth. She was forcing herself a bit too much. “At the debriefing, why did you lie?”

Oh, right. Tony had played it down, had told him something about enhanced people getting their hands on him – which technically hadn’t been a lie. The assassin was obviously enhanced, Tony had just simply let out the part where the two incidents couldn’t be connected.

“Uhm. Pride?” Tony tried, scratching his neck in a nervous gesture before calming his nerves further with another, larger sip from his whisky tumbler. “Maybe you’ve heard of it. Makes people do not so smart things.”

“Stupidity gets you killed.”

Tony made a face, but as he caught her eyes anew, his features went blank. They stared at each other for a moment. Tony was the first to look away. He felt his mouth going dry and swallowed hard. “That bad?”

“Worse.” Natasha had spread out the contents of the file further. “I have been looking for him quite a while myself. He is a ghost. A story.” Her gaze was intense. Tony felt her eyes on him like a physical weight. “They call him the Winter Soldier.”

“Kind of catchy.”

Natasha shot him a look. It was one of those looks he didn’t really like to be on the receiving end on, because as well as they knew each other – fighting alongside in combat, having each other’s back when shit hit the fan – she still gave him the creeps. Catching the hint he motioned with his free hand that he would now shut up and listen.

“The stories don’t seem to add up” She pulled out another picture. The shot was grainy, the quality horrendous. It captured the metal of the shooters left arm and the star on his shoulder was, though blurry, a dead giveaway. “All I ever find are bodies.”

“Sounds like your record,“ Tony muttered as he followed the snippets she laid out for him to look at. He scanned over them hastily and found no mention of a metal arm. Obviously the reason why his own attempt on research had been unsuccessful. Tony hadn’t really had much to work with. Fear and terror were not really helpful when trying to identify a thread.

Tony furrowed his brows as he caught the date printed on one of the pictures. It had been taken in 1976. “How did you come by this?” Tony looked up. He wasn’t fooling himself, Natasha had obviously been holding onto this file for quite a while, as it was filled with various pictures and copies of reports and newspapers - there was indeed history here. “And why tell me. Why not talk to the big man behind the curtains?” With Natasha there was always a chance that she would lie and manipulate you.

The redhead shrugged one shoulder delicately. “A contact.” She was eyeing him like prey, assessing him like a target. He felt animosity coming off her in icy waves, even though he wasn’t really sure if it was directed towards him, or their common friend. Fact was, that this was not Natasha Romanoff, friend and fellow Avenger, talking to him. This was the Russian spider. This was no SHIELD business, he realized, this was personal to her. “Why is he following you, Tony?” Her voice was smooth, but with an edge sharp enough to cut a diamond as she asked him the question yet again.

“Why come to me?” If she wasn’t answering his questions, why should he? Tony took a step away from the table, turning away from her, but not turning his back. “And what’s with the bugs? Aren’t you and Fury braiding each other’s hair and sharing all your dirty little secrets? Not that I would mind learning a few of your dirty secrets.”

“Nick and I do share the trait of handling personal things under the radar.”

“Nick, huh? Sounds pretty personal to me.”

Her lips parted slightly, as if she was about to say something. Then she lowered her gaze before she met his eyes again, her lips a tight line. The slip was brief, but it was there. “This is personal. To me.” Or maybe it was just another one of her many mind-games.

“So we won’t tell daddy that there is an assassin on my heels.” He circled back towards the table, looking at what Natasha had laid out for him to look at. “I don’t see his face. Why don’t I see his face on any of these?”

“Because going after him is a dead end. Like I said, I tried.”

“So how can you be sure it’s him.”

“I am not.”

“Ah.” Tony drew out the word. “So you tell me there might be a killer-assassin on my heels, but you are not sure?”

“I want to believe that I recognized him correctly. I couldn’t get a good look and I couldn’t get a full picture from any camera. Even if I am wrong about his identity, this is serious, Tony.” Tony guessed she was right. “His hits date back almost 60 years. He never leaves a trace. Suddenly he is out of the woodwork, following you around. In the open.” Her next words made it hard to swallow. “Once I knew where to look it wasn’t hard to find him.”

“Where did you look?” Tony already knew the answer.

“Behind you.”

Was the room getting smaller? Tony could swear that the walls were closing in.

The whisky that had warmed his gut suddenly turned to acid as he realized what Natasha was saying. There was an icy sensation running through his veins, eating away at him. He felt the floor under his feet shift.

“I-,“ he broke off, not knowing what to say as he met her gaze.

He had been followed and he hadn’t even realized. Or he had. He had been seeing a shadow hovering behind him, always balancing delicately on the very edge of his vision and gone as soon as he turned around. Then again, his mind wasn’t doing so hot after he had taken that nuke for a ride into another dimension, so he had figured he was just going crazy. The paranoid kind of crazy.

Learning that he wasn’t going crazy was a relief. Then again, being followed by someone who even freaked Natasha Romanoff out a bit wasn’t something to be too happy about, he supposed.

“Should I get dressed up?” Tony gestured towards his own appearance. “I suddenly want to get all dressed up. In red and gold. It would suit the occasion.”

Natasha took a single step closer to Tony, in an attempt to intimidate him, he guessed. Instead he felt her small hand on his elbow and there was a look in his eyes one could mistake for empathy. She wasn’t the person to invade someone’s personal space, but then again the concept of personal space was lost on her.

“I found him in New York.” Natasha’s next words made the walls around him come crumbling down, trying to suffocate him. “He only started following you _after_ you met, as far as I can tell. He first shows up just a couple of streets away from your science award show last week.” Where he had been out in the open. Literally. He had been on the streets, signing stuff and letting people take his picture. All for a good cause, because that was part of the business deal in making the world a better place. When you wanted to sell the world the lie that you were okay and that there was nothing to be afraid of, you had to be convincing.

Tony had been a perfect mark, had been an easy target the whole time. He was aware of how vulnerable he was out in the open, paranoia getting the best of him ever since Afghanistan. Only until now, Tony hadn’t known that there really had been someone watching him through a scope. It was one thing to suspect it and an entirely different thing to _know_.

The redhead plucked the glass from his nerveless fingers before she was guiding him to the sofa where he dropped onto the cushions. Natasha sat down next to him gracefully.

Tony knew what she was doing. She was playing nice. She was playing him. Playing with his fear of not being safe, not being able to protect himself or the people he cared about. Knowing her she would reveal very soon why.

“He followed you to Manhattan, Tony,” Natasha stressed.

Even though she was stating a fact he already knew by now his mouth went dry. “Is this the part where you tell me why daddy is not listening in on this?” His voice sounded breathless in his own ears.

“Because, if our guy gets a whiff that we’re onto him, he will most likely disappear.”

Tony willed his gaze back to the open file. “And we wouldn’t want that, now would we.” Tony leaned forward to slide a few sheets over the table with cold fingers, spreading the content of the file some more so he could scan over the slips of paper again. Even though he couldn’t really focus, he saw that the information was … patchy. At best.

There were reports of assassinations, some of which a couple of decades old. More grainy images. One of them showing the assassin in a shooting pose in black and white, kneeling and aiming with a long range gun. His hair was almost as long and dark as it was on the shot of the traffic camera two days ago, his face mostly covered and the star prominent on his left arm, which he knew was covered in metal, even if the low quality shot from a surveillance camera didn’t show it all too well from his personal experience.

His eyes came to rest on the date printed in the corner of the snapshot again: 1976. It clearly showed a grown man. Posture, hairstyle and arm – everything matched. He remembered the assassin’s eyes vividly and while they had lacked warmth and life, they had also lacked creases. Maybe it was just because eyes like those didn’t smile, or maybe because his eyes had been smudged with war-paint, but Tony didn’t think so. Even if the picture did show a bulked up teenager, the assassin had to be at least 40 if not 50 years old by now. Way too old to have such young features.

He shuddered.

“Tony.” His gaze snapped up. Only then he realized his hand was trembling.

Facts. He had to focus. “How do we know he’s Soviet?” He heard his voice filling the room, but was not aware of speaking.

“I met him a couple of years ago on a mission. Before I was with SHIELD. When I realized someone was onto us, I covered my mark with my body. Someone took him out. Bullet went straight through me. When I woke up, my mark was missing a hand and I was about to bleed out. Not my proudest moment. I had nothing but a dead body and a bullet to show for my efforts. A soviet slug. Untraceable. The only thing I could learn about were other victims.” She nodded towards the file. “They all had three things in common: a perfect shot, no traces and a soviet slug.”

At least now he knew how personal this was for her, this was a fucking pissing contest between professionals.

“How could you even identify him?” His face was not clearly to be identified in any of the pictures, part of his face always covered, if not by some sort of muzzle then by a baseball cap and a tucked up collar.

“I didn’t. I guessed.” Which was a big fat lie. Natasha was hiding something and he wanted to know what. She eyed him curiously, as if her spidery senses had caught up onto something. “What happened after he attacked you, Tony?”

He looked at her with fear in his eyes as he felt sweat drenching his shirt. “I don’t know … he hesitated. I got my suit to power up enough to send him flying before I got out of there.”

Natasha studied Tony’s face, her voice steady even as her eyes gave away how torn she was. “His record is flawless.”

“So, I'll ask again: why are you here and why aren’t we telling your sunshine Nick about this?”

Natasha shifted and suddenly so did the mood. Somehow, it became suddenly easier to breathe. “I don’t want to scare him. We both know that Fury would be all over this as soon as we report this.”

We. “Now he’s Fury again. See, how am I supposed to keep track, if you can’t even decide if you’re on a first name basis with daddy?”

“Focus, Tony.” Her voice made him shut up long enough to actually listen. “I have a score to settle with him. The deed is old but not forgotten. There is also something you might want to take a look at.”

“What?”

“Something from your past. I’ll show you in New York.”

“Why wait?” It couldn’t get any worse anyway.

“Because I have to get confirmation from my source.”

“So you tell me about my assassin-stalker and then you want me to run around with a target on my back for another day?” Tony bit out, agitated. “Why tell me now, when you want me to just go back to pretending the threat doesn’t exist?”

“You’re still alive, aren’t you?” Tony shot her an accusing look. “If the Winter Soldier had been about to make a move, he would have by now. You have been quite exposed and he never bothered to come close enough to kill you.” As Tony still didn’t seem convinced she added: “The crowd in front of the court is no place for a long range gun. He would have had to use a handgun, which wouldn’t give him enough time to disappear thanks to the heavy security that comes with the attention the public gives the whole hearing. His only other alternative are knives and he wouldn’t be able to get that close.”

Tony gave her a look that read clearly _Oh really._

“I won’t let him,” Natasha assured him, which did nothing to safe the mood.

“Yeah. Great. That makes me feel so much safer.”

“He is too close to use any weapon other than a handgun or a knife. Public killings are not his style. No traces, remember?”

He considered her words long and hard as Natasha got up slowly. Apparently time was up.

Natasha’s arguments made sense, they always did, but she was holding something back. Tony was intrigued, but then again he was not entirely suicidal. “As much as I like not telling big kahuna about our secret games, why play this one risky? I like excitement, but I like it only as long as I am alive.”

“Don’t do anything stupid, Tony.”

“Like sleeping in my suit? Or tell Fury about my stalker? Or flying to New York to hide in my bunker?”

“You mean your tower.”

“My tower is my bunker. An above ground bunker. With lots of windows and suits and weapons. Which are kind of the same. Not the windows. The windows are not weapons.”

Natasha smoothed out invisible wrinkles on her perfect fitting pencil skirt. “I need him to follow you back to New York.”

“I don’t want to know, do I. I think I do.”

She flipped her crimson hair over her shoulder casually. “I lost him.”

“You lost my Soviet assassin?” Tony gaped at her.

“You are still alive, Tony. There is a bigger endgame.”

“Shouldn’t we bring in the big guns? We should. Like Eye-Patch. The Green Guy. My spider buddy. A _god_.”

“If he wanted to kill you, you would be dead already.” She picked up her leather portfolio, leaving the file for Tony.

“I am not going back to that cave. Or any cave. And I don’t appreciate people stealing my tech or my company. There is no bigger endgame I can think of that I like. At least there is no girlfriend left to abduct and violate this time,” he added muttering to himself.

Natasha turned to look at him with a sincere look in her eyes. “Do you trust me, Tony?”

“Not when you lose Soviet stalkers. Soviet assassin … stalkers.” She shot him a dirty look. “Okay. Yes. Sure. Trust.”

“There is something about him I recognize. I want to know, Tony. I need to know.” Tony, being a genius, caught up. This was about her past. Not about a bullet, but her actual past. Another secret he was intrigued to find out more about. “If I don’t find out what it is, we tell Fury.”

“What’s in it for me?” Tony asked casually, mind already made up. “Apart from you giving away one of your secret obsessions.”

“He has more than one skeleton in his closet. Your name is in there too.” She was referring to the file which was still spread out on the coffee table. Then the corners of her mouth lifted teasingly. “And it appears he has a quite unique kind of gear.”

The arm. She was talking about the fucking arm. “Are you promising me tech? You don’t even know if it’s any good!”

“It’s the tech that kicked your ass.” Well, damn. She had him hooked. “Be careful.”

Even after Natasha had left, Tony remained where he was. There had been an ill-timed knock from housekeeping just moments after Natasha had been gone. The only reason he felt safe was the suit in his suitcase – the irony wasn’t lost on him – and the whisky in his system.

The contents of the file were now strewn across the coffee table, the bottle of Single Malt he had ordered from room service only yesterday was almost half empty and he considered sleeping in his suit. The other suit. The suit that didn’t get wrinkles when sleeping in it, but would get scratched from a bullet.

His name was not in that file. That sneaky little spider had been either lying to him or she had not put in the center piece of evidence on purpose. He couldn’t really tell with her.

Somewhere down the line, he had asked JARVIS for a calculation of how likely it was that Natasha Romanoff was lying to him. His A.I. had replied with “Given her previous position as a Russian spy dedicated to pulling down the capitalist regime that you personify, and since she is Russian, Sir, I would conclude that the possibility rests with 140 percent.” Sassy little shit.

Tony had JARVIS pull up the feed from the day he had gotten his ass kicked by his soviet assassin onto his phone again, though he had looked at it countless times already. There was nothing new to discover, but it gave him something to do, something to focus on.

At least now Tony had a name for his attacker.

After Tony had uploaded everything in Natasha’s file to give his A.I. more information to work with, he ordered JARVIS to run a search and pull up everything on a supposedly Soviet _Winter Soldier_ he could find. Even with all the new intel, JARVIS still had trouble piecing together something that resembled the assassin’s face. The Winter Soldier truly was a ghost.

It was almost midnight, and Tony was still contemplating going behind Natasha’s back and telling Fury anyway, because the only thing he liked more than winning was being alive. Finally, he pulled one of the closed curtains aside and did something insanely stupid. With a dull _thud_ he slapped a picture from the file to the window, glaring at the sleeping city and his own worn out reflection. The amber liquor had unraveled the cold knot in his stomach and filled his mind with liquid courage.

If this so called _Winter Soldier_ was so goddamn good, then Tony should be dead, and if that had not been the Winter Soldier's primary mission, then this was an open declaration of war. Or if nothing else, an invitation for the fucker to show his face and, while he was at it, also his hand. Tony stood there, in a suite of a hotel room 32 floors above the ground with every single light in his room on, pressing a particularly grainy picture from the 70s to the window and a piece of paper to show the world what he had written on it with in big fat capital letters: _I know who you are_.

If SHIELD was watching, they now knew as well. Tony didn’t care. He had lived with a shadow trailing him for what could have been months now, because who knew how long the Winter Soldier had been watching from a distance?

He was so done with it. He wanted his life back. Even though he couldn’t blame a Soviet assassins for his wormhole-related PTSD, he could at least face the demons that were still physically here to face. Tony had never backed down. Not when they had held him hostage in a cave in Afghanistan, not when Stane, his father’s friend, had wanted him dead, not when the vengeful Russian Vanko, another one of his father’s demons of the past, had tried to kill him, not when aliens invaded his world. He wasn’t about to back down from a faceless Soviet assassin whose record was over 50 years long, no matter how intimidating he was.

Daring the Winter Soldier was stupid, but at least his paranoia would now have a solid reason to be as present as it was anyway. Tony was living on borrowed time anyway, the arc reactor in his chest an ever-present reminder. If the Winter Soldier was really only half as good as Natasha said he was Tony was now officially a dead man walking. Not that he hadn’t had a target on his back before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The art created for this part, by Lore (Lets_call_me_Lily).  
> 
> 
>   
>  If you enjoyed it, tell her [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11344287)!  
>  There will be more artwork in Part II of the series :)


	2. staring at me, not yet knowing

There was a man. A man he knew. A man he was supposed to kill.

He was crouched down in the corner of the room, had his mismatched arms wrapped around his knees as he stared at the mask that was lying in the middle of the room. Sunlight spilled onto dusty floorboards through a tear in the newspapers covering the windows.

He couldn’t kill a dead man.

It had been five days, fourteen hours and twenty-seven minutes since he had gone underground. It was not new to him that he had … glimpses into a foreigner’s life, whose memories somehow tasted like his own, but felt like a stranger’s at the same time. Sometimes, when he had been awake long enough, the memories were so vivid and violent, so intense, that they threatened to tear his mind apart. When it was too much to bear, he asked questions. Small ones, trying not to give away what comfort or pain this stranger’s memories had provided. Every time he did, fear would creep into their eyes. They would become nervous until they dragged him onto the chair and made it go away. The chair brought oblivion. He had learnt to not ask questions.

He had been awake for too long already when he had stared into the dead man’s face. Memories had begun to fester in his mind. Sweet memories of a hard but quiet life. Of charcoal and canvas. Of golden hair and a girl named Rebecca.

The asset had failed its mission. They had sensed that something had been off, they had seen him hesitate as he had loomed over the stranger who had worn a dead man’s face and full body armor. He had seen it in the way they had held themselves around him after that. Warily. More so than when they took him out of the cold darkness that they kept him in between assignments. 

On the way back to their base, he had disappeared. He had known that he had to act quickly, before their leery glimpses solidified into awareness of the small changes in his behavior and he was punished once again.

The memories his mind was tormented with now were the dark ones he always preferred to forget. Gunshots and blood. Pain and darkness. They were still the stranger’s memories. His memories, filled with cold darkness and ice and commands, felt like an old blanket, worn out around the edges and full of holes, and the blood was never his own.

As often as he had willingly sat down into the chair that would bring him relief, this time it was different. He couldn’t go back, not now. It didn’t feel right to just let go of what was so urgently nagging at his mind, and the longer he waited the more wrong it felt to go back at all.

Never had there been something in his memories he could connect to, neither from his own nor from the strangers, but the dead man had been real. How could a dead man, a man he killed, live? It didn’t make any sense.

There was crusted blood on the back of his head from where he had crashed into the wall. His gear was burnt through on his chest where the blast had hit his torso. The dark jacket he had stolen to hide smelled worse than he did himself.

The canned food he had procured was already used up. He had to move anyway, had been here too long already. They would come for him, they always did, although they were slow and sloppy and forever a step behind. He had to wait till nightfall to find a new and secure location, but while he waited for the darkness to provide him cover, he fell asleep. That was when the nightmares started. He had never dreamt before. When he had slept in the ice, there had only been darkness, and when he had been asleep outside of the ice, he never had fallen into a sleep deep enough to dream, needing to remain aware of his surroundings. It had been a requirement, because when he was not in the ice, he was on an assignment.

The dreams had started only when he had been on his third day of being on the run. He had never been out of the ice for so long, at least not that he could remember. They sent him jolting awake in the middle of the night, with a scream on his lips as a searing pain threatened to split his skull open. He dug his fingers into his hair, wanting to crack his own head open to stop the torment. He longed for his chair, wanted to beg for oblivion, but he couldn’t go back there, because then he wouldn’t find out who the boy with the golden hair was. He wouldn’t find out why he remembered a sweet girl named Rebecca and he would never know why a dead man was amongst the living.

Maybe he was a dead man too. Maybe he, too, was walking the earth after his time had passed.

It had been eleven days, three hours and seven minutes since he had gone underground. His hair was hidden underneath a baseball cap, his silver fingers covered by a glove. The collar of the dark jacket would hiding his features well enough if he hunched up his shoulders a bit and ducked his head slightly when he was walking past a security camera.

He was still wearing the Kevlar vest below the stolen dark shirt. Apart from his vest and weapons, the iron mask was his only possession. It had not taken him long to learn the name of the dead man. After that it was easy to find out where he lived and where he went in his daily routine.

He was impossible to reach, but that didn’t matter to him; he had time. There was no tracker in his arm, otherwise his former handlers would have collected him already. So he had plenty of time. Waiting was second nature to him. He had learnt many things about himself in the last few days, one of them being that he was apparently a very patient man.

He kept a low profile as he hovered at the edge of the dead man’s life, trying to learn more and find an opportunity to approach him.

The dead man – Tony Stark – seemed fidgety. Nervous. He never held still. His eyes were constantly searching his surroundings and it felt to him that the dead man knew he was there, watching, waiting.

The idea to kill him was present as well. It was not quite an urge and definitely not a memory. The order tasted stale on his tongue and the name didn’t quite feel right. He also knew he couldn’t make a move, either way, not when his handlers were still looking for him. He had to be on the move constantly. If he stayed in one place for too long they would find him. They had found his first hideout two days after he had abandoned it. If he was careless, they would catch up.

When the dead man left the city, he followed him to Washington. Even though it was a welcome change of scenery, traveling was a tedious thing to do. He had to move in daylight way too much, increasing the risk to be spotted. He followed the dead man anyway.

Tony, the dead man, surrounded himself with dangerous people. Mostly, he had only of them, but one of them was familiar to him. The redhead. He was sure knew her, but his mind refused to supply the necessary memories.

So he waited until the opportunity presented itself, or until his mind pieced the two voices in his head together enough that he could find all the answers within his own head.

Until the dead man, Tony Stark, invited him on his own.


	3. that our fates were intertwined.

There were tools and unfinished projects scattered in his personal workshop, metal pieces piling on his desks, an almost assembled motor hanging in a frame. Tony’s hands were greasy and there was motor oil smeared on his forehead where he had wiped away sweat with the back of his hand. His Black Sabbath T-shirt was covered in engine oil, m frayed at the seams and had a hole near the collar. It was beyond redemption. So was he. What else was new.

From the control panel on the door came beeping sounds as someone entered their authorization code on the digital keypad, muting the music in the process. The whole tower was set up with a tight security network, only allowing people access to the selected areas he decided on.

The lower floors of Stark Tower were filled with labs, and part of it was filled with offices. Here in Manhattan were only half a handpicked dozen teams of engineers and scientists resident to work on the ideas he threw at them. Those labs were well maintained and well organized, spotless, and the complete opposite of his personal creative workspace, where he took cars apart, built engines from scratch and built experimental suits. Almost no one was allowed in his personal workshop of the tower, his inner sanctuary. The melody of the code pressed by the visitor gave away that it was Tony’s favorite Russian spy and fellow Avenger paying him a visit. “You are aware I am holding a screwdriver,” Tony dared her without looking up. Everyone knew that tinkering with his toys was his way of dealing with things. Tony was a genius, and keeping his mind occupied benefited not only him and his nightmares, but also society – at least that was what he had said to Pepper during one of their many fights.

Circling Tony, Natasha appeared in his periphery vision without getting too close, making sure to let him hear her footsteps. Smart move.

“I come bearing peace offerings.” Problem was that when extending an olive branch one usually sounded apologetic. She didn’t even try to fake it.

Still, the words got Tony’s attention. His hands stilled as he looked up. Natasha hadn’t returned his calls for two fucking days after dropping that bomb on him in Washington, and Tony had been on edge ever since. He had locked himself in his tower right after his return to New York and had JARVIS run security checks almost hourly, keeping him updated on everything going on in and around the tower. It wasn’t that he regretted the open dare he had thrown in the assassin’s general direction, but sober it felt like it would be smart to wait until Natasha came back with the answers she had promised him.

Even though Stark Tower was a reasonably safe place with its tight security system, Tony wouldn’t put it past the Winter Soldier to make an appearance. Hell, Tony wouldn’t even put it past Romanoff to slip through his state of the art security system if she put her mind to it. No matter how often they’d saved each other on the battlefield, he was still terrified of her. Considering that even the Black Widow was concerned about the Soviet assassin, Tony would prefer to meet him at all, ever, but given his track record, Tony knew he was out of luck.

“This better be good,” he gritted out. He, too, could play that game and he still felt agitated at how she had left things. Tony hated unsolved puzzles, especially when he wasn’t the one with the means to get the answers.

“My friend got back to me with the necessary information.”

“Could’ve told me that over the phone,” Tony turned his attention back to his work, sticking his fingers in greasy holes that weren’t supposed to ooze hydraulic oil and poking at it with a screwdriver.

“You’re upset.”

“And you’re amazingly observant.” As Natasha stayed quiet, looking at him, knowing Tony had to say his piece, the genius did just that. “You come to my hotel room,” he snapped, dropping the tool onto the table, “to tell me there is a Soviet _assassin_ on my heels. You know he attacked me in the streets. And then you just disappear,” the words were emphasized with angry hand gestures, “after dropping that bomb, telling me to keep Fury out of it. Why.”

Natasha’s face was a mask, not giving away any emotion. God, how he wanted to throw something - preferably at her. Knowing it wouldn’t solve any of his problems, he resolved to steaming and glaring, which was in fact the safer option.

“I am not trying to hurt you, Tony,” Natasha promised, her voice low.

Tony huffed “I want answers. Now,” he demanded, giving her a fuming look. Just for good measure, he picked up a screw driver to chuck into the tool box next to him with a loud clang.

He watched how she took a deep breath, as if she was readying herself for a hard task, but all she did was retrieve a USB device. Eyeing her warily, he crossed his arms in front of his chest. “What’s that?”

“Answers.” She put the stick on the desk closest to them, within Tony’s reach. “You won’t like them, but you deserve to know before word gets out.” There was an uncharacteristic expression on her face - grief, or maybe sorrow.

Staring at each other, they stood in the silence of his workshop. As angry as he was, he was also intrigued. Apparently, whatever it was, it was important enough not to be sent via any encrypted channel and he wanted answers to what was going on with his Soviet stalker. Tony also knew that Natasha would release the information into the world. Her world being Fury.

Without saying a word he snatched the USB stick and headed over to his computer, plugging it in. Several folders popped up on the screens in front of him. His eyes scanned over names, all mission reports of some sort. “What’s this?” he barked while opening two files simultaneously, their contents popping up and filling the screen. With a swift flick of his wrist the files were hanging in the air around him, the holographic desktop spreading them out so he could see them all. His eyes scanned over the data as he tried to take the flood of information in.

“There was something bugging me about the latest information I received when I looked into him.” Natasha didn’t need to refer to his stalker by name.

Tony had still not forgiven Natasha her little game of hot and cold and the anger was still showing in his eyes when he shot her a look, clearly communicating that he was growing tired of her talking in riddles. Barton may find it endearing; he sure as hell did not. “I’m listening,” he all but grit out while he scrolled through the information.

“When SHIELD made me your assistant, I went through the file they had on you.” Tony raised his eyebrows but remained silent as he was flipping through blackened out reports, half of it in a language he didn’t understand anyway. Most of the scanned documents were old, the paper frayed at the edges and half of it evidently written on typewriters.

As hard as his genius brain tried, he couldn’t really make sense of what he saw. He shot another disgruntled look in Natasha’s direction in order to prompt her to continue.

“I didn’t think much of it then, most of it was common knowledge,” she explained, circling the room, looking at the documents from behind as she carefully kept away from Tony’s personal bubble. “Apart from the things about Stane and your time in Afghanistan there was not much to it, besides the tragic backstory of your parents.”

That got her Tony’s full attention. Fuck her, dragging his parents into this mess. “What have my parents got to do with this?”

Natasha hesitated for a moment. “I don’t know for sure yet. What you see there are snippets, the first real proof to rumors that are almost two decades old.”

“This is Russian”, Tony pointed out the obvious. What has this got to do with anything?” Tony took a calming breath, his nostrils flaring. It was impossible to miss how hard it was for him to keep his temper in check. His jaw was set tight and he looked about ready to throw a punch. Dum-E was whirling his robotic arm a few feet away from them, as if sensing the anger of his master.

“That's where things become,” there was a strange expression flashing over Natasha’s features, gone too fast for Tony to read, “personal.” Natasha’s eyes wandered back to the mission reports, drawing Tony’s attention to them as well. “You were always on SHIELD's radar, being Howard's son, a founding member of SHIELD.” Tony huffed in annoyance - he hated being reminded of the overshadowing legacy his dead old man had left behind.

They had been watching him to _keep him safe_. Sure. He knew the fairytale by heart. Still, SHIELD either hadn’t been able to find him Afghanistan, or they had known his location all along and had left him there to rot anyway. Tony trusted Fury as far as he could throw him. Without wearing one of his suits.

As Tony was grinding his teeth, Natasha held up her hands in a calming manner, asking for patience as she continued. “Like I said, I never thought anything about your parent’s death other than the obvious. An accident was unlikely, but SHIELD did not have the proof of who or why your parents might have been killed. At least, that’s what I thought.”

It became hard to breathe and the world was beginning to get fuzzy around the edges. His parents had always been a sore spot, as was the legend Natasha brought up next, just to make things worse.

“Ever since Captain America, scientists all over the world have tried to copy the Serum, but none were ever successful, at least not to the extent Erskine had been. Your father was one of them.” At Tony’s questioning look Natasha stepped closer, gesturing towards the digital files hanging in the air between them, telling Tony to continue with another yet unopened folder. The documents were heavily redacted as well, were incomplete, but gave away a crucial piece of information: there was a SHIELD logo in a top corner of the page and a scientist referred to as Mr. H. S. – Howard Stark, obviously. Tony took in the patchy report, his brain coming up with theories while Natasha filled the blanks.

“You know my story, my background. The Red Room was another of many organizations who tried to recreate it.” Tried and failed, as far as history knew. The results of that particular serum strand had been grotesque – a few of those monstrosities had been unleashed in recent years, proving to the world just how mad scientists could go in pursuit of perfection.

Tony couldn’t believe what he was reading. “This says he almost did it.” Of course his old man had tried to achieve the impossible, again, Tony thought bitterly. From what wasn’t redacted in those old SHIELD files, Howard Stark had indeed almost managed to produce something similar to what had made Steve Rogers so great.

Steven Grant Rogers, alias Captain America, had been an ever-present figure in Tony’s life. His father hadn’t been able to stop gushing about his character, his achievements, his loyalty and bravery, about how Captain America had kicked the Nazi’s asses and had been a great man to boot, leading a suicidal team into the hottest war zones he could find, until he gave up his life in the greatest sacrifice to his nation. Tony had grown up to hate what Captain America meant to his father - but none of this was of importance right here and now, so he put it out of his mind and tuned back into the conversation.

“Apparently so. Only thing is, this is all the documentation that exists about it. So either he was onto it or he had indeed succeeded.” Natasha paused for a moment. “Look at the date, Tony.” The SHIELD report was dated November 22nd, 1991. “The other reports were what I have been missing. Years ago there were rumors about Super Soldiers, about the Russians having the serum.”

Tony turned back to the Cyrillic files he had been scrolling through before, looking for a date to prove the horrifying theory Natasha laid out for him. “JARVIS, translate.”

“As you wish, sir,” the A.I. confirmed obediently.

“Do you think it was a coincidence they suddenly became successful, just around the same time your father did?” Natasha continued, unfazed by the little side-conversation Tony had with his computer. Those who knew the genius were used to him talking to the room and the room listening.

Icy terror ran through Tony’s veins, forcing the air out of his lungs when JARVIS layered the Cyrillic words with their English translation. No. This couldn’t be true. “There’s no proof,” he uttered. “There’s no report about them having Super Soldiers.”

Natasha agreed. “They would have used them if they had, so something went wrong. But the timeframe, Tony. It could be a coincidence, but I don’t think it is.”

Shocked by her revelations, Tony dropped onto a nearby stool. The room around him was swaying. He rubbed both of his hands over his stubbly face, smearing the oil on his forehead further in the process. “This is impossible,” he breathed.

“What if it isn’t?” Natasha suggested carefully.

“The _Winter Soldier_ ,” Tony muttered, looking around the room, his eyes unfocusing while his brain ran through the possible scenarios. He remembered the sheer strength of the man with the muzzle. Sure, the metal arm was a nice addition and could have done a lot of the heavy lifting, but the kick that had sent him flying – Tony had a dent in the suit to prove the strength of it.

“He is an assassin”, Natasha reckoned as Tony’s sentence hung unfinished in the room. “A gun for hire, _if_ the intel about him is true. It’s a possibility that he was behind your parent’s accident.” A possibility, but not yet proven. From what Tony picked up it was also a possibility that the guy was part of this whole Serum arms race that had been secretly going on ever since World War II. The words hung unspoken in the room.

A calm settled in Tony’s chest as his brain hooked its claws into one crucial piece of theory. He looked up, focused on Natasha as the world came to an abrupt halt around him. “So you’re saying the Winter Soldier killed my parents for the Russians?”

“I am saying it is a possibility,” she emphasized.

Even if this was true, even if the Russians or Soviets or whoever would have had the Serum (if his father had been successful, which had yet to be proven) and Natasha’s conspiracy turned out to be true, then there was still one major question left unanswered: “How do you fit into all of this?”

The research was extensive, almost obsessive. Due to the blackened out parts, it was patchy at best. It also looked as if Natasha had kept some of her intel out of the files. The story she was painting into the stale air of his workshop was wobbly at best, and didn’t explain its origins, nor why she was so invested. She couldn’t have done this within a few days. Natasha was good, but she wasn’t _that_ good.

“Personal matter,” she evaded.

“Oh no,” Tony objected. “This concerns me as well now.” He nodded towards the still displayed files. “Your words, not mine.” Raising his eyebrows he looked at her inquiringly.

“I have taken a personal interest in him.”

Tony huffed; Natasha’s attempt to brush him off was just maddening. “That is not how this is gonna work, buttercup,” he provoked her.

She lowered her eyes for a brief moment. Under different circumstances he wouldn’t have pushed, giving in to her sudden delicateness. This time, Tony was set on glaring at her until she would buckle. To his surprise Natasha didn’t need a lot of silent persuasion.

“When I was with the Red Room, they had men come in to train us. One of them was him. They only referred to him as the _Soldier_ or _Asset_. I met him again a couple of years ago. Before I was with SHIELD.”

They looked at each other for a brief moment. He had never heard her speak about her past, let alone specifics about her time before SHIELD. All he knew was what the rest of the team knew: the terrifying tale of the Black Widow. None of them knew anything about her origins, other than the assumptions the name _Red Room_ brought with it, and that Barton had brought her in. Barton and Fury were probably the only people who really knew anything about her. She was a very private person. Hell, up until this point Tony would’ve bet on the reactor embedded into his chest that the redhead wouldn’t give away any detail of her past prior to SHIELD, even when tortured or locked in a room with Banner’s alter ego.

Natasha was the first one to tear her gaze away, focusing on the data. “Odessa,” she finally spoke up, with her shoulders still straight and her head held up high.

She flipped her crimson hair over her shoulder. After the world-famous _Battle of Manhattan_ that was still giving Tony anxiety attacks, amongst about a dozen other traumatizing events in the last couple of years – she had grown it out again. “Soviet slug,” she repeated. “I know it was him, the Winter Soldier. I only found out about it later, when I got my hands on a picture. I’ve been looking for him ever since.”

The man that trained her. _One_ of the men that had trained her, he corrected his own thought. Would he do that? Would Tony be interested in whoever made him into an assassin, into a killer? Tony couldn’t relate, couldn’t fathom why he would want to find them. Revenge? Closure? With Natasha, one never knew. It could also be about him shooting her, about being bested. He didn’t put it past her to make this not only about her past but also about her ego.

“You found him,” Tony’s voice sounded dark in his own ears.

“I have, now all I have to do is to get close to him.”

They were staring at each other, the air heavy to breathe.

“So.” Tony drew the syllable out. “Before _word gets out_ ,” he repeated the spy’s prior choice of words, straightening his back while anger and irritation were battling for the upper hand in his stomach. “You’re gonna be telling your boyfriend.”

Raising one of her perfectly plucked eyebrows, the spy cocked her head slightly. “Depends who you’re referring to.”

Seriously?

“Fury knows something’s going on.” Of course he did. “He let me have my way, but now that this concerns your safety as well, I can’t keep him in the dark much longer.”

Now it was Tony’s turn to raise his eyebrows. This wasn’t really about Tony’s safety. At least, not entirely. “Come on, ginger. Cut the crap.”

Natasha made a point staring at him for a couple of heartbeats. “It’s about the serum as well,” she finally gave in.

“Because the Winter Soldier is the Soviet version of Captain America?”

“That’s the thing we don’t know. Given his _history_ ,” Tony knew she was referring to the pictures dating back a couple of decades, “one possibility is that he was injected with the serum they might have stolen from your father. Another is that he’s a myth.”

“A myth,” Tony deadpanned.

“It could be that the _Winter Soldier_ is nothing but a mantle. Something passed on from man to man, so that the legend lives forever.”

Studying Natasha’s features he considered how likely it was she was right about any of it. “You’re suggesting a lot of possibilities today.”

Natasha pressed her lips into a thin line. Another sign Tony was overstepping invisible boundaries.

“Whenever the Winter Soldier has shown up, someone ended up dead,” she stressed. “Usually, the cold body turning up would be the only trace of him being around. Something is off. He is after you, and believe it or not, I’d prefer it if you’d stay alive for a while longer.”

Of course she did, Tony mocked silently. He believed Natasha when she said that she considered him a friend of sorts, in her own twisted way. Still, Tony was no idiot. He knew he was also way more useful alive, since he apparently was the prime target of the Winter Soldier’s current interest. Which meant that Natasha was still trying to get to her old buddy before SHIELD would. He was the bait to her prey.

“How long.” Tony was not entirely sure what exactly fueled his sudden reignited anger. “How long till you’re gonna tell Fury?”

“Five days. I haven’t seen him around since DC. Which means he is either keeping his distance or he’s-”

“Closing in for the kill?” Tony helpfully suggested with his nostrils flaring.

“We can tell Fury right now,” she challenged him. “Call him. Tell him who we know is around.” Natasha paused for the pure purpose of drama. Manipulative little spider. “Or you help me find him, get some closure while pissing the director off.”

Damn it. She’d had him back in DC when she mentioned the guy's arm. Tony was desperate to get a closer look, to learn what the world's enemies had been toying with. If Fury got his hands on the Winter Soldier before they did, he’d most likely disappear without a trace. SHIELD had a thing for hiring bad guys, but when they didn’t comply they would _go away_. The other thing was, Tony really had taken a liking to poking the director with a stick, and this was a great opportunity to do just that.

“Why should he be after me?”

“A gun for hire,” Natasha repeated her previous words. “It could be anything.”

It could also have to do with the serum. If his father really had managed to recreate it, maybe they were coming back for more. “But you don’t have proof. For any of it.” Tony got to his feet. He still felt agitated, the movement of his hands jittery.

“I don’t have proof,” she confirmed. “All I have is this,” Natasha gestured towards the files on display, where JARVIS was still helpfully translating away in silence. “And a long list of possible hits of the Winter Soldier throughout the decades, but nothing that could withstand trial.” Not that SHIELD would hold a trial, or need any proof whatsoever to begin with.

Part of Tony wished Nick Fury’s vengeance upon the Soldier. No matter how hard the rational part of his mind tried to hold onto logic and common sense, his thoughts were dulled and distracted by the nagging fact that the Winter Soldier could be behind his parents’ death. It was eating away at his sanity, fueling his sleep deprived temper and clouding his judgement.

Tony continued pacing through the room with his back turned to Natasha until something inside him snapped. When he spun around to face her again, there was determination in the tight set around his jaw. “You could have just sent me the files and told me over the phone,” he accused her, “Why’re you showing me this in the first place?” After all, there was no proof this had anything to do with his Soviet assassin. This was about his parents, but there was no visible connection yet. There was only suspicion and hunches ripping open festering wounds.

“It was an accident.” Tony’s voice was just about as ready to crack as the rest of him was. It would have been okay if it had been an accident. Pinching the bridge of his nose between two fingers he was trying desperately to get a hold of himself.

“I know, Tony.” Her voice was velvety soft and thick with sympathy. He didn’t believe a second of it.

“If,” his voice faltered. “If he had anything to do with it, I will kill him,” he seethed in cold determination.

Natasha closed her eyes for a moment, taking calm breaths before she looked at Tony tiredly. Either the years of looking for answers had taken a toll on her, or she was simply trying to manipulate him into empathy. “You will get yourself killed, Tony. Besides, there is no evidence that he did it.”

“This is enough proof!” Tony yelled, pointing his finger towards the data hanging in the room. “Enough proof to go after him and make him pay if he did.”

The redhead was smart enough not to approach someone who was emotionally backed into a corner. She remained where she was, leaning against one of the tables while Tony continued pacing, breathing heavily, restraining the urge of wanting to destroy something.

Only when he finally came to a halt, when he dropped gracelessly onto a big metal box somewhere in the room, did she approach him slowly. His shoulders were hunched, his elbows rested on his thighs and his head hanging, he radiated misery. All the fight had left him.

Natasha reached out and put her hand on his shoulder. The silence between them was fragile and stretched on, the nasty implications clouding the air until it became hard to breathe.

“I didn’t want you to find out from someone else.” From someone who wasn’t his friend, Tony heard between the lines, quickly catching on. “If all this is really connected then this is too big, even for me.”

Tony wanted to nod, to agree with her, but he couldn’t bring his body to move. Her warm hand was a soothing weight on his back.

“Do you have any idea if your father really was successful in recreating it?” As soft and comforting her voice was, Tony felt himself go cold inside. The warmth of her hand turned searing acid. So this was what she was after. The serum.

If he had any proof of any sort that his father had indeed managed to recreate the miracle of Erskine, he would have been all over it. Paranoia getting the better of him, he found himself suspecting Natasha was only here to lure him into spilling his secrets, leaving Tony feeling betrayed and hurt.

“No,” he heard himself say, “You know more about this than I do.” Sadly enough, it was the truth.

If she was really here to get anything out of him, then who knew if she hadn’t been acting on Fury’s behalf all along – Fury knew Tony would never give something like this over willingly, the director was a scheming and manipulative bastard. Fury’s secrets had secrets. He wouldn’t put anything past the director.

“Okay,” Natasha offered. “I’ll try to find out more.” When Tony didn’t say anything Natasha added: “Promise me you won’t anything stupid.”

“Like what?”

“Like going after him on your own.”

 _Yes, because that was such an awful idea_ , Tony found himself thinking sarcastically.

“You are not a killer, Tony. Not like this. Revenge is cold blooded murder and I don’t want to you to get hurt or do something you won’t be able to take back.”

It felt like forever until Natasha left. The hell he would sit around idle and wait for her to come back like he was some damsel in distress. Tony had made his decision with Natasha still in the room. He would neither wait nor trust her. If this Winter Soldier really had anything to do with his parent’s death, he would get answers. He _needed_ answers.

Pocketing his phone he told JARVIS to lock the place down. Tony would look for this guy himself and given the slight chance the assassin had gotten Tony’s open invitation, he needed to make himself accessible. What else would be better suited for this than one of his many mansions with their open windows and grand terraces, a security hazard in the making?

\- - -

He plugged in the phone he fished out of his pocket. His pants were dirtier, and the dirt under his nails worse than he remembered it being.

The phone came to life. It was only Wednesday, but the phone read Friday.

He had lost time. Again.

Taking a deep breath to calm the rising terror in his chest, he kept staring at the date displayed. He had to act quickly, before he’d really lose it and did who knew what. The nightmares had become worse, so bad that he started to dread sleep. Now he was even losing time when he was awake.

He needed to know. He needed to see the dead man. Silently praying to a god he didn’t know anything about that he hadn’t already sought out the dead man during his mental blackout, he put the phone back down.

Looking around in the room, he found himself in a different hideout he’d set himself up when he’d followed Stark to the capital. He was still wearing the same clothes and had gotten, or rather stolen, a new phone. Everything he owned was indefinitely borrowed. The clothes came from goodwill, who thought him to be a homeless man, the seared Kevlar vest and knives from his previous handlers. The last phone had been from some old lady - he had no idea to whom this phone had belonged.

In his pockets was cash he didn’t know he had and a crumpled up receipt from when he had bought the charger he was using. The receipt was from earlier today. Apparently he was still in DC.

He sat down on the floor of the vacated apartment. The neighbors on the floor above him were home, trampling around in their flat. Leaning his head against the naked wall he closed his eyes and did what he always did to calm himself: he remembered.

He tried to pull up the last memory and went on from there. The thing he remembered clearly was observing the dead man. No. _Tony Stark_ , he corrected himself. He had been waiting around patiently, had followed him to Washington, where he had done what he was best at: observing. To lie in waiting for hours while not losing focus came as easy to him as breathing, which was probably the only reason he hadn’t missed the invitation. Tony Stark had told him in capital letters that he had the answer to the most burning question the soldier had: who he was. He knew he had been given a name – the Winter Soldier – but it was not _his_ name.

He knew the dead man’s name, Tony Stark, but he didn’t know his own. What he also knew was that he tended to pray silently. Though there was no god for him, there was someone in his mind. Someone angelic, with fair skin, golden hair and eyes as blue as the clear sky in early spring. Someone like he had seen in the church when they had let him sleep in the entrance way, after the pastor had seen him wandering around in the pouring rain, drenched to the bone in his first week. Leaving his handlers behind marked the beginning of this time for him. He knew he had lived two lives already. There was his life as the Winter Soldier. Then there was the life he had lived before that, a life he didn’t remember, but knew was in his head somewhere, floating around in his mind, circling around golden hair and the name Rebecca.

Perhaps all he remembered was a painting on the ceiling of the church, or maybe he remembered an angel someone had put there. The angel felt real, like he had seen him once, though not in a church or a dream.

Once he was back in New York it took him two more days to figure out that Tony Stark, the man who held his name, was not in his tower. It didn’t take long to learn Tony Stark's whereabouts after that, as the man wasn’t exactly making a secret of it.

He had blacked out the day before again, had lost three hours and found himself in an alley without any memory of how he got there. This posed a problem, something he needed to deal with, but before he could do that he needed answers. Then he needed a place to lay low and figure things out. His previous handlers were still looking for him. He’d seen them in DC and also when he’d checked on the places he’d been hiding in New York. They had men placed close by his old hideouts, had set a trap for him. He was smarter than they gave him credit for. Leaving town to go after Tony Stark was a good thing, as it brought distance between him and _them_.

Before he’d be able to travel between states to face Tony Stark, a few changes in appearance were necessary. He was good at moving without being seen and hiding in plain sight, but he needed a change of clothes if he wanted to be able to continue being undetected. The bad smell lingering in the crumbling building he’d set up his current lair clung to his skin.

The shower provided only cold water. He didn’t like the cold, as it reminded him too much of dreamless sleeps and the involuntary stasis his handlers had put him in. A splintered mirror over a dirty sink told him he needed a shave. The sharp knives leaving a burning sensation on his skin. It was unpleasant, but his beard had grown enough that he would stand out in a crowd. It made him look like a homeless wreck. The freshly stolen clothes were too tight around his shoulders and he had to wear the Kevlar vest over it, hiding it underneath the oversized jacket.

When he finally approached the house Tony Stark was at, night had already settled, providing plenty of cover. The windows of the mansion were huge and barely gave the residents privacy. Only the front of the house was made up of concrete, an almost blank wall facing the street with small windows next to the entrance. It was a nice neighborhood, with enough distance between the buildings to easily fit a helicopter landing site. The lawn surrounding the mansion was well-kept and the low wall around the property wouldn’t pose as an obstacle.

The cameras embedded into the wall of the building were easily detected and it didn’t take him long to figure out that the whole place was under surveillance. Getting in unseen would be a challenge. The thought stirred something up in his chest. Excitement.

Lurking in a shadow outside, he watched and waited, only to see there was nothing to be observed. Although light was spilling out onto a grand terrace on one side of the house, there was no movement, no music. He suspected the glass doors to the terrace to be closed, but he couldn’t really tell from his position.

The dark denim jeans and dark brown jacket made him almost invisible as long as he remained in the shadows unmoving. The collar of his jacket was flipped up and his long hair was hidden under a baseball cap. His left hand was covered by a glove as the metal of his arm caught any stray light quickly, reflecting it and giving his presence away easily.

Closing his eyes for a brief moment, he turned his head to listen in – only to hear nothing but the nightly sounds of an upper-class neighborhood. Tony Stark had openly communicated with him. It hadn’t been an invitation per se, but it hadn’t been a threat either. He didn’t know if he was welcome, or if he would be considered a hostile intruder. What he did know was that Tony Stark had made himself easily accessible to him by choosing to come here.

Taking in deep breaths to calm his pulse, he checked for his knives, their familiar weight grounding him. The most important and powerful weapon was himself. Even though he didn’t know his name yet, he remembered his training, knew his skills. He knew what he was capable of, knew what the weapon attached to his left shoulder was capable of. The things he couldn’t remember, his body was remembering for him.

\- - -

The house had been bought as a temporary solution after Killian‘s fiery people had blown up his mansion in Malibu. If Tony had any say in it, they would have never returned to the city. However, given that the headquarters of Stark Industries were still in Malibu and Pepper had insisted on continuing in her position as CEO, he hadn’t had much choice but to obey her wishes if he wanted to spend any time with her.

It should have been Pepper and his new home. There was a workshop all set up in the basement, larger than the one he’d had in his old mansion, which had been added after he had acquired the property. The huge terrace was supposed to be the perfect place for them to talk about their future with no one else interfering. Not Stark Industries, not SHIELD, not the Avengers. No one.

Life hadn’t given them the time to do so. Now Tony was sitting in a house he had barely slept in and going through his old man’s stuff, or at least, what he had digitally archived. It was a lot, but by no means all of it. Tony simply hadn’t had the time to go through everything his father had ever written, experimented or discovered, between alien attacks and his better half being turned into a hot mess.

Well, okay, the discoveries and inventions he had all been working through, ages ago. Also most of his dad’s research and yes, also most of his experiments. Not all of them though, there was simply too much Howard Stark had thought about and Tony had his own business to attend to. A genius mind never rested and apparently, if those records of SHIELD were true, Howard Stark had been involved in some serious matters and Tony didn’t even know half of what Stark senior really had been onto.

Fidgeting with some unfinished toy, he walked around in his workshop, circling the suit that stood at his disposal in the middle of the room, in case the Winter Soldier showed up. JARVIS was watching the parameter, brainstorming and arguing with Tony.

“I mean, he was a founding member. It would only make sense that he had secrets. Do you think it’s possible that Fury has this whole unpleasant attitude from my father?”

“I don’t know Sir, I have never met Howard Stark. I couldn’t really say.”

“Okay,” Tony said, snapping his fingers towards the holographic 3D model hovering in the air. “Run it again.”

Ever since he had set foot into this empty house, his mind had come alive. He looked at things from a new point of view, a calmer point of view. The conversation with Natasha had left him unsettled, anxious and furious. This, this was better. A few hours of sleep – other people would call it _passing out_ – researching and obsessing, just to repeat it all over. This was his thing, this was what helped him focus. Creating stuff and solving riddles grounded him, helped him keep the panic attacks that crept up on him every so often at bay.

“Of course, sir.”

JARVIS was running a search for anything related to the Soldier again, widening the parameters and looking in all the data Tony had ever fed him and in all the servers he had access to. Which were, quite frankly, a lot. Especially when including the data he had accessed from SHIELD servers. He was tempted to go back there, hack into Fury’s server farm and harvest more information, especially since he knew to look way deeper than he had the last time. The only reason he didn’t was that the reports Natasha had dropped onto him either meant there were archives that were not connected to any server Tony could access virtually – which was highly unlikely - or were only accessible the old-fashioned way, existing only as hardcopies.

The 3D model floating in the room mapped the outlines of the building in blue lines. When the Winter Soldier showed up, Tony’s security system would notice and his latest armor would open up to accommodate him so he’d, well, not get shot. Anything else, he’d figure out along the way, since that was his specialty: improvising.

The rest of the room was a mess of holographic documents. At least, it was a mess to any bystander. To Tony, it was a well-organized system. Dumping his fidgeting toy and picking up a tablet instead, his fingers flew over the screen, pulling up pictures and information available to the public.

Tony slid his finger over the screen and into the air, bringing a picture of Steve Rogers up on the big monitor - the room itself. Staring into the face of a dead man whose legend continued to live on, he tapped the fingers of his right hand onto the back of his tablet in a steady restless rhythm.

“Tell me,” he murmured, all but glaring at a heroic black and white picture of Captain America in a propaganda shot from the front line, “since you knew my father so well, do you think he did it? Do you think he managed to replicate what made you so … _big_?” Knowing his father, Tony was sure that his old man had done it.

Sighing heavily, he tossed the tablet onto one of the armchairs in a corner of the workshop. When decorating, Pepper had insisted on comfort in this little playground of his. There was a huge sideboard covering one side of the wall that had a sink and a coffee machine installed. There even was artwork on the walls of the lounge-like corner of the room.

The garage was separated with enforced glass walls. The _treasury_ , as he liked calling the room he spent his time tinkering with his toys, had no suit chamber like his last mansion in Malibu. After all Tony had promised Pepper after they (or rather she) had kicked Killian’s ass that he was done with his obsession. So most of his suits were kept in the tower in Manhattan.

If Tony really wanted to know whether anything Natasha said was true, he would have to look for proof. Proof that didn’t come from her.

“JARVIS, bring up what he have on Captain America.”

“Everything, sir?”

“Let’s start with whatever you have from my old man’s files floating around in your cybernetic brain.” Walking over to the coffee machine he rubbed his eyes. It was hard to focus and he needed a booster. When was the last time he slept? JARVIS would know.

When Tony looked over his shoulder the place was flooded with holographic files. He made a whirling motion with his hand, gesturing JARVIS to get it moving, while pressing the buttons that would gift him with a double espresso. Ever since stepping foot into this abandoned building he had been sucking down coffee as though it could replace sleep.

“Come on, buddy. Work with me here. Sort this out.” JARVIS did as was asked of him, highlighting passages as he divided between Howard Stark’s files and whatever he received from external sources. Tony turned back around, taking in what his A.I. laid out for him. An old photograph showing his dad às a younger man next to Captain America caught Tony’s attention.

“The great Captain America. Let me look at him so that I can feel small, petty and unloved again,” he spoke in a honeyed tone, his voice laced with disgust at the grudge he was holding. His feet carried him right in front of it so he could let his eyes roam over the blond, bulky form of the icon while sipping his coffee. Both men were smiling at the camera. It was a genuine expression, one of those that made your eyes wrinkle at the edges. The childish sting of jealousy in his chest felt as sharp as ever.

If his father had tried to replicate the serum and gotten killed over it, it was only because Captain fucking America hadn’t been around to serve as a lab rat. Duplicating the serum would have been easier than reinventing it from scratch, and the bad guys could have hunted him down instead of murdering his parents. Tony suddenly hated everything Captain America embodied a whole lot more. If he’d ever meet the guy, Tony would punch him in his perfect teeth. Luckily for him, he and his plane had dropped into the Atlantic about 60 years ago.

“You know what. While we’re at it, and since we have all the time in the world, pull everything up.” He’d simply sort out everything he already knew or read. Perhaps the method of elimination would provide some answers.

Photographs of a proud Steve Rogers in tattered uniform standing amongst his comrades were filling the room and poisoning the air. “You are so smart, JARVIS. Tell me, do we suddenly, by some magical impossible incident, have anything like a formula of a serum, a concept, anything that heads into the general direction?”

“No, sir, we still don’t.”

Tony sighed. “Thought so,” he said, picking up the cup and refill number five within the last, oh boy, three hours. “When was the last time I slept, JARVIS?” Tony asked, curiosity getting the better of him.

“32 hours ago, sir.”

“Oh good, then we’re in the clear. Check the area while you’re at it.”

“The parameters are still clear, Sir. Though I am spotting a heat signature outside. I would strongly advise to call for backup, or at least to consider wearing your suit for this occasion.”

Adrenaline was rushing through his veins. His mind cleared and his senses zoned in on his surroundings. It was the eerie calm he knew too well from the many fights he had been in. The thrill of the upcoming battle would follow in no time, running through his body, making him do reckless things once he was facing the imminent threat.

“Huh,” was all Tony said, eyeing his newest suit proudly. After the _Clean Slate Protocol_ Tony had gone back to his signature style in suits, red and gold. “Can’t say I don’t see the logic in your suggestion. But we don’t want to scare him away, do we?” Sipping on his coffee one last time he knocked the chest of his iron suit with his knuckles. “Power it up, buddy.” The suit came to life instantly, the eyes of the mask lighting up in a flash, as did the external power source embedded into the chest plate.

Tony still had the reactor in his chest keeping him alive. The surgery to remove the shrapnel had been scheduled, but he had chickened out last minute. Tony wasn’t entirely ready to let go of what kept him alive all these years. The break up with Pepper hadn’t exactly helped his issues.

“I have something handy when he comes barging in. Don’t you worry, dear.”

“I am an A.I. sir. While I am not able to feel emotions, my algorithm urges me to express the concerns about your plan.”

“Oh I don’t have a plan, JARVIS, chill your circuits. Come on, buddy. You know me better than that.” Tony put down the almost empty mug and headed towards the workshop’s open door.

“I do, sir. And you specifically asked me to tell you if you’re doing 'something plain ass stupid again that could get you killed', if I may use your words.”

“Did I say that?” Tony asked while walking up the stairs, checking if his earpiece was secure in his ear, connecting him with JARVIS.

“You did. You even made me record it. Shall I play it for you? It seems like an appropriate occasion.”

“Later, honey. The guest for our dinner party has arrived.”

As he set foot on the ground floor he couldn’t hear the silence of the house, only the thrumming sound of his own heart filling his ears. The device he was wearing on his arm might look like a wristband but it would turn into a light version of one of his suit gloves, including a repulsor.

Tony looked around the room. JARVIS was still connected with him, could talk to him at any given time over the speakers in the house or through the earpiece Tony was wearing. He knew JARVIS would warn him if there was someone approaching the building directly, but the voice in his ear remained silent.

Just as Tony’s survival instinct kicked in and he considered if he should order the suit upstairs, the lights went out. Well, shit.

Turning around to look into the dark room he saw movement from the corner of his eye. Panic was rushing through his body, crawling over his skin with cold, sharp fingertips. When he turned, nothing was there. JARVIS would power the building up in no time. Still, his visitor shouldn’t have been able to cut the energy resources in the first place. Tony knew why he had insisted on building the place its own reactor _before_ choosing the curtains for their bedroom.

His heart was beating out of his chest and he was licking his lips as he moved from the stairs towards the kitchen on the other side of the spacious room. The fingers of his right hand were ghosting over his watch. The suit would be upstairs in a heartbeat – Tony had tested the response time multiple times. He would be in the safe embrace of his latest armor within seconds. Unfortunately it did nothing to calm his nerves. His pulse was skyrocketing. Tony was fully aware that an Iron Man suit didn’t really pose an obstacle for the Winter Soldier. Unfortunate as that may be.

Keeping his breathing calm became harder by the second. He couldn’t ask JARVIS if the front doors were still locked, or if the building had been penetrated in any other way. With the blackout, JARVIS was cut off and Tony had to rely on his blunt human senses.

He stopped in his tracks, his right index finger hovering over the touch screen of his self-made smart watch. It was as if the air in the room shifted to announce the presence of a silent predator. Tony spun around, activating the wristband with a twist of his hand, willing it to life. He was already feeling the cold sweat of terror clinging to the back of his neck. With quiet swirling noises metal plates slid over his skin, building themselves up to a lighter version of his Iron Man glove.

The gloomy light of the night was pressing against the glass wall, illuminating the silhouette of a man standing in his living room. Tony’s right hand was raised in front of him, bringing only a repulsor between him and the intruder. Why did he park his suit downstairs again?

There was a lump in Tony’s throat and panic seared up in his chest. Even though the man was not moving, he emitted danger. The kind of danger that had Tony’s primal survival instinct kicking in.

There was a predator in his living room and Tony didn’t know if he’d be able to walk this one off.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you Carmen, you may not know it, but you made me fall in love with the general idea of this story. 
> 
> Find me on [ tumblr](https://missgunst.tumblr.com).

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Art Post: Through the Scope](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11344287) by [Lets_call_me_Lily](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lets_call_me_Lily/pseuds/Lets_call_me_Lily)




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